The Tory party's attempts to save hereditary peers may have been damaged by Lord Joseph Philip Sebastian Yorke being caught selling cocaine in the House of Lords during the debate on the terrorism bill.

Said bill includes a provision which makes it illegal to plan crimes committed abroad, a move resisted for over 150 years by more liberal-minded MPs (the Emperor Napoleon III was pissed off that the bomb in an attempted assassination on him was made in England). The provision includes an exemption for MI6, so evidently there really is a license to kill.

McNeill-Lehrer, of all things, had an exposé no one else seems to have picked up, on those Iraqis the US first used against Hussein, and then tried to deport from the US using secret "evidence" they could not see. You will remember they hired a former CIA director as their lawyer, but even he couldn't see the evidence. Then 95% of it was declassified, and guess what, there really wasn't any evidence. The FBI mistook someone's tribe for a last name, used unsupported hearsay, and one agent told the judge that according to his long experience, Arabs just plain lie.

So Dan Burton has an illegitimate kid from an affair. That means two women have had sex with him.

Even if you take Chernomyrdin's economic plan seriously, it amounts to a massive tax forgiveness. First they will massively inflate the economy by printing money, and then later they'll crack down on taxes. Who wouldn't want to pay their back taxes with worthless rubles? The Washington Post today has a good story on the disappearance in the crash of South Korea's middle class, but it's the Russian middle class that has really been screwed. The poor barter, the rich had their money outside the country....